Moms

I don’t have social media unless you count this blog and Pinterest, so I’m a little unaware of what is hashtagging, tiktoking, going viral…whatever. But, apparently, some time last year a picture of a mom working on her laptop in her bathtub while her very young toddler played at the water table set up in the bathroom went viral. Her point was how unfair COVID was making life on working moms: here she was working in her bathtub and having to watch her toddler at the same time. I’m still trying to figure out why in the world the bathtub was the best place for to set up her “office”.

 

This has been a running current through all the other “crises” of COVID. While business owners are being put out of business, some people really are dying, the government is creating cash out of thin air, and the dominoes are going to start falling fast and furious – working mothers are whining and complaining that they are being forced out of their jobs because now they have to be home taking care of their kids. What is going to happen to women in the workforce? This is harassment! Women are never treated fairly! Can you hear the violins?

 

The article I skimmed that wanted to bring this bathtub mom back as a poster child quoted a woman who has a whole organization set up called “The Marshall Plan for Moms”. A quick google search and skim-read of what pops up will give you the essence of what this group is after. Basically, working mothers should be paid every month for their “unseen, unpaid labor”.

 

For those of you who may be a bit rusty on your history, the Marshall Plan (named for Senator George Marshall who spearheaded it), chunked out more than $15 billion of United States money to Western Europe after World War II in order to help them “recover” from the War. In essence, its real purpose wasn’t recovery at all. The main goal was to keep Russia (and, so, Communism) at bay while making America a world power with lots of war-torn countries indebted to it. Even the most basic grasp of history will tell you it didn’t stop Communism from spreading. And why did America need to be a world power, anyhow? Most American history books paint the Marshall Plan as one of America’s greatest moments. As a follower of the Roosevelt “walk softly and carry a big stick” idea, we would have been much better off taking that $15 billion, investing it in our own country, and minding our own business.

 

The Marshall Plan for Moms has been around for a while, but it’s taking on new momentum by using the catch phrase “recovery”. They’re pushing the agenda that working moms need more “recovery” than, say, business owners in Minneapolis whose entire stores and inventories were burned down by BLM riots. Working moms need to be paid for all the work they do at home as well as all the work they are doing at work while they are paying for someone else to take care of their kids. Am I the only one who sees the irony in the sentence I just wrote?

 

The whole idea wreaks with irony. What about moms who don’t work? Those moms work just as hard (if not harder) being at home 24/7 with their kids. They don’t get paid vacations, or sick days, or health benefits in any way, shape, or form. Many of them homeschool their kids on top of “just” being mom, and they don’t even have a teacher’s union to back them up. Is there a Marshall Plan for them? Or do they not matter because they’re not “contributing” to the world?

 

Now I realize there are a lot of single moms out there who have to work. They don’t have a husband or trust fund that allows them to stay at home with their kids 24/7. There are even married moms who have to work for one reason or another. But for moms who are working on their laptops in the bathtub: you chose to do that. You chose to have kids. You chose to have a job. You chose to set up your office in the bathtub for some unknown reason. And like all of us, you have to live with those choices. If you don’t like it, give up the job. Put the children up for adoption. Buy a desk to work at. Whatever. But you know what you get paid for, and you know what you don’t get paid for. And you chose to do both. So, stop whining and complaining about the choices you made and man up. I’m sorry: woman up. Or, really, just shut up.

 

And now my mom is going to scold me for even saying that. My mom who raised eight kids, moving every two years, and homeschooled them and NEVER got a dime for any of it. No vacations, no sick days, and I’m not even sure when she slept. (After all, I don’t get much sleep with only three.) But while I’m sure there were moments, I never heard her whine, complain, or demand at least minimum wage. And now she’s at my house, watching my three little rascals so I can attend a meeting, or taking them shopping, or buying them lunch for a picnic and play time at the park. She drives hours to spend time with my nephew, and she would do the same for my other nephews if they didn’t live sixteen hours away. I have heard the I’m-getting-too-old-for-this phrase, but she is justified in saying that at this point of life. And, still, it doesn’t stop her.

 

So, woman in the bathtub and others like her, maybe you should stop Instagram-ming stupid pictures and contemplate all the women who have come before us. Those women who crossed the prairie in wagons, raised kids in houses with no plumbing or electricity, plowed fields right alongside their husbands with a baby on their back, and some who had no choice but to slave in cotton fields. They did it all with no lobbyist groups, no hashtagging their griefs for the world to see, and no payments for their labor. In fact, they never even thought of such a thing. Because they were women and they shouldered the responsibilities of being women. Maybe you should try being a woman, too.